Vizard 7 » Reference » Vizconnect » Introduction
7.7
Vizconnect is Vizard's tool for connecting displays, trackers, and much more without programming. The visual interface lets you connect devices on-the-fly, see the results immediately in your Vizard render window, and use the visual interface to troubleshoot thorny hardware issues.
Vizconnect also represents an important software-hardware abstraction that frees you to design and develop your interactive simulations independently of the actual hardware used. At run-time, it's trivial to reconfigure elements such as the type of display or tracker to what's available.
Beyond displays and trackers, you'll see that Vizconnect also supports input devices (e.g., game pads), transports (e.g., driving effect), 3D widgets (e.g., virtual tape measure), avatars (e.g., inverse kinematics), and still much more.
Connecting it all together is Vizard and Python so you'll also be pleased to see how easy we've made the API which lets you gain full control of the devices you visually configure. To help you with this, everything you do in Vizconnect can be displayed as simple-to-read Python code. So no matter what your level of expertise is, this tool will help you learn and use Vizard more efficiently than ever.
The configuration interface is essentially a graphical tool for generating Vizard code. It eliminates the need for knowing the details of connecting to hardware. For example, when you select a HMD from the Display menu the generated code will include functions calls to setup the correct stereo mode and field of view for that particular device. Any application that imports the configuration file will render correctly for the HMD. There are three modes for creating configuration files within the interface:
Presets: Select from a list of common preset configurations.
Guided Wizard: A three step process where you select your display, head tracker, and optional hand tracker.
Advanced Interface: Display, tracker, and input devices are selected individually. The advanced mode also supports the integration of features such as transports, avatars, and tools.
With Vizconnect, applications can be written to work independent of whatever display, tracking, or input hardware is used. For example, you could have three different files for individual VR systems that you use: a desktop configuration controlled by a mouse and keyboard, a head mounted display with motion capture suit, and a CAVE with a wand for input. Likewise a single configuration file can be applied to multiple applications if they all run on the same system.
In addition to hardware support, Vizconnect integrates Vizard libraries that assist with user movement, interaction with the VR world, and avatar IK. Transports are virtual methods for moving the user around the environment. For example, with the flyTo transport the user can point to a location in the scene and fly there in moments. Although the user has not physically moved, their position in the virtual environment has been updated. Tools support various interactions with the environment, such as grabbing or highlighting objects. Both transports and tools can be created and mapped to input device signals (e.g button presses, glove gestures) within the GUI. Avatar IK refers to animating an avatar using tracking data, for either 1st or 3rd person views of the avatar. Vizconnect provides a visual tool to map trackers to avatar body parts.